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William Control speaks about a new record, touring plans and touring
essentials!

I recently grabbed a few minutes with music veteran Wil Francis in regards to his solo project William Control who also doubles as lead singer of long time rock act Aiden! We spoke his new headlining run that he just completed as well as what he’s working on the rest of the year. He’ll be a busy man splitting his time between Aiden and William Control the rest of the year. While he’ll be taking some time away to work on a new Aiden record, he told me he hopes to have a new William Control record out before we ring in 2016. Read on for our new interview and definitely keep your eyes peeled for new stuff from this talented man!

Being that you are a touring veteran, soft one to start, the three things you must have with you while on the road to survive?

Three things I must have with me? Clean socks, cigarettes, and money for coffee.

Money for coffee? Definite! Then how has this tour been going so far? I don’t think you’ve done a full US headliner in a while.

Yeah well the last one we did was in 2013. So it was a couple years ago.

Then how has this one been going so far?

This one’s been great. I mean it’s not the biggest tour but it’s just us promoting it on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and shit. But yeah people that are coming are loving it.

Like die hard fans. Then maybe I know it’s been about a year since your last record. Are you currently working on a new record for this effort or is it still something that’s a while away?

Let’s see. I’ve begun kind of fiddling with some new stuff but I’m going to make a new Aiden album this summer. So I’m doing Aiden this fall, that’s when it’s going to come out. So William Control, I’ll probably have a new record out by 2016.

And how have you learned that balance? I know that you still do both projects actively. Maybe how do you kind of split your time between the two? Do you go a few months where you just do Aiden stuff, do you go a few months where you just do William Control stuff?

There was a time when I started William Control in 2008 and I primarily did Aiden, and then I did William Control after the record cycle finished. Then in 2011, I started doing William Control full time and kind of put Aiden on the back burner because we had some shit going on. We were dealing with a label of ours. So I mean I pretty much have just been focusing on William Control for the last four years now. With this, I’ll just do Aiden probably for a year or something and go back to William Control.

Then maybe how do you go about the writing? Do you feel it still differs? Do you think you’ve kind of gotten into a steady rhythm of how you write your music or is it still pretty different?

Yeah I don’t know, writing songs is kind of strange. I mean sometimes an inspiration hits at the most inopportune times. Where you think, fuck I just need to put this down. Or sometimes you’re in the studio and you just write and you can’t do shit and it just sucks. It’s weird, art is weird. It just happens when it happens. You can’t really force it.

Perfect and obviously you’ve been doing music pretty much your whole adult life. Maybe when did you realize you first kind of wanted to do this as a career? Learning to make this work and be a musician.

I mean I wanted to make work right after I got sober in 1999. I started a band and it didn’t work out. The guys were flaky then I started Aiden and quickly knew that it was something that I wanted to pursue full time. By the excitement of people that were hearing the band. I thought, fuck it, I can definitely make this work. Here we are, ten years later.

That’s crazy. So when did you first start doing this then? I know you’re still pretty young. So when did you first start doing music if that was in 1999.

I must have been about ten years old when I picked up the guitar. So that was what, 1992. I’m thirty three.

That’s still pretty young though.

Yeah, that’s pretty young. Yeah I picked up a guitar when I was about ten. Kind of played all through my adolescence and learned the instrument and learned how to craft a song and all that shit. It wasn’t until I got sober where I realized I fucking hated doing it for people. This is what I needed to do. Fuck everybody.

Then maybe advice to kids who are just getting started to keep on going at this? Like for example, I know you have Justin Symbol out and this is like their first US tour.

I mean any advice from me would be to go to school first and get a degree. That way when you don’t make any money playing music, you can get a real job but I guess the other advice would be to write songs well. Work on writing songs first of all.

Then like you said, I know you’re going to do Aiden. Is that album like almost done, is it finished?

It’s about half finished. I’m going to finish recording it this summer.

Perfect so like you said you’re going to be focusing on Aiden for a little bit then kind of going back to this project but what’s going to be going on? Are you just going to be like steadily on the road, are you going to be doing selective touring, like what’s going to be going on?

I mean I got a couple of touring plans in the works right now. I’m not going to do it like ten months a year, it’s going to be like really select shit.

Like really think about the tours before you go into it. Well thanks so much William Control, I think that’s it!